I like starting new things. I like having the opportunity to learn something new. And that’s why I signed up for this screenwriting challenge in the first place. I wanted to take a shot at something I’d never tried before.

Well, I have a lot to learn in the next couple days, that’s what I learned today.

I started by looking at the NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge website, which had a very helpful section covering the basics of how to write a screenplay. It covers exactly what I’ve been most concerned about, which is the formatting rules of screenplays. I will be referencing this page heavily throughout this challenge.

Next I wanted to see if I could find any good examples of screenplays that I could read over. We learn by the examples of others, after all. This is how I came to discover IMSDb, the Internet Movie Script Database. And let me tell you, if you like movies, you could spend weeks combing through this website. All the scripts are there to read. For free. It’s dangerous. Needless to say, I have plenty of reading material here to work with for when I need examples of how things are done.

As I was reading through some scripts, I began to remember having listened to a podcast a while back that had something to do with screenwriting. I dug through my listening history and came across Wondery’s Launch podcast by John August. I realized that it was about August’s journey of launching a novel, but his career has mostly been spent as a screenwriter. So I decided to look him up and see if he had anything else out there that could be helpful. Turns out, he has a website.

Of course I went digging around his site. And it is full of excellent advice on writing screenplays! It also has a link to the script reading app he helped build, called Weekend Read 2. I remembered playing with it a while back, likely when I was listening to his podcast. So I loaded it up on my phone and filled it with a handful of scripts for me to read through over the next couple of days to get a feel for the flow of them.

So now I feel like I have the tools I need to do the work of learning. I have two days to burn through all this material. And hopefully at the end of it, I’ll have a bit more of a clue than I did at the start of the week. Which is my general goal for every week.

So why is learning screenwriting something that requires a project? Well, firstly, it’s something I’ve never done before. It’s a format I’m completely unfamiliar with. I’ve never even read a screenplay. I’ve read plenty of plays and scripts, but those were all theatre-oriented. Screenwriting is its own beast. And it comes with its own challenges for me.

The biggest challenge, I think, will be to force myself to switch into writing with a camera in mind instead of a reader. Readers are great. They fill in the gaps. They paint the world you write in their own minds, with little direction. You mention a girl and a sofa and a lit fireplace, and the reader fills in additional surroundings, because reading is a magical thing.

But a camera doesn’t do any of that. It will only see what you put in front of it. And the actors will only say the words you give them, and follow the stage direction you set for them. My thinking is that screenwriting must be so much more intentional. And direct. It feels like the purest form of “show, don’t tell” to me. Though maybe I’m wrong. I’m new at this.

The other big challenge I think I’ll be having to deal with is the formatting. The only thing I know about screenwriting is that the formatting needs to be specific. By this I mean that there are rules regarding how the actual document is formatted. This is why there exists a market for screenwriting software that does all the formatting for you. So I’ll need to learn these rules and follow them.

Two big challenges. Doesn’t seem insurmountable.

The formatting stuff I think I can work out by just tracking down some style books or something. I’m sure the NYC Midnight challenge website probably even has a formatting guide. Or at least I hope it does, because that’s going to be the first place I look.

As for the style of writing, the writing for a camera rather than a reader, I think the only answer will be to read some screenplays to see how others have done it. Learn by example, as it were. So that will be the other big focus for the research phase. Find some scripts and read them. I’m actually looking forward to that part.

So these will be tomorrow’s goals. I’ll let you know how it goes.